The following short video of Wally Bobkiewicz, city administrator of Issaquah,  Washington, and a new fellow at the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA), was one of seven we filmed at NAPA’s annual conference in Washington D.C. between November 2 and November 4.

In this video, Bobkiewicz provides commentary about some of the challenges that smaller communities around America face.

“People are so busy living their lives that local government (and) cities really don’t cross their minds,” he says, explaining that in Issaquah, “we try to build trust, to have transparency, we try to tell stories.”

To get those stories heard, his community uses a variety of tools, including videos and podcasts. “We talk about new businesses, coming on board, but then we slip in things like water projects and street repaving, so it’s a little bit of the candy with some of the vegetables that we do.”

Another issue he addresses is public meetings. “When the community city council meets at seven o’clock on a Monday night, people are generally busy with a lot of other things.” So, “We try to take the meetings on the road. We try to go to where people are actually at, to talk about issues. Because the day of people expected to come on a weekday night to our city hall for our meeting is really over.”

This is the last of the videos in this series (though we hope to come back with a similar series next year).  The first was with Robert Shea, CEO of GovNavigators and former associate director at the US Office of Management and Budget; the second was with Sue Schwartz, president of the American Planning Association; the third was with Matt Hart, executive director of the Capitol Region Council of Governments in Hartford, Connecticut, and the fourth (posted just before the holidays) was with Graham Knaus, CEO of the California Association of Counties, followed by Marlon Brown, director of the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs and David Gragan, a well-known public sector procurement professional.

All these videos can be found at the bottom of this page.